You heard, I know. Another among the poorest countries got hit. The front end will be for India, China (Pakistan?) to help with rescue. Later there will be options for our nickles and dimes directed towards survivors whose houses have been rubblized. It is peak climbing season on Everest, and adventurer$ there have been hard hit as well. They have helicopters shuttling in as weather permits. That is good news, as far as it goes, but what if we had enough helos on scene to help the po' folks as well? Later, it would be a really great thing if people in high seismic risk zones had enough resources to rebuild better than unreinforced mush houses. Otherwise this is all going to happen again...
I have to say, I'm strongly of the opinion that the Everest climbers should be bottom of the priority list. They're difficult and expensive to access, and for the money and manpower needed to save one Everest climber, hundreds of Nepalese people could be saved. And, of course, the mountaineers had already made a positive decision to put their lives at risk by climbing a mountain with an extraordinarily high death rate. So, really, my opinion is that they can look after themselves while resources are spent helping normal people in Kathmandu and surrounding towns and villages. But, of course, the climbers are rich.
Some climbers (and Sherpas) are dead. Trumps rich I guess. But if nobody in Kathmandu etc. is getting under served, complaints are out of place.
I think this would be a good point if there were adequate resources to save everyone. But there are not. There are many reports of remote villages that aid agencies can't reach yet. Meanwhile, it doesn't seem to have been very difficult to get to even more remote and sparsely populated Everest base camps.
